The Project Gutenberg eBook, Child Maidelvold, by Anonymous, Edited by
Thomas J. Wise, Translated by George Borrow

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Title: Child Maidelvold
and other ballads

Author: Anonymous

Editor: Thomas J. Wise

Release Date: May 12, 2009 [eBook #28771]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILD MAIDELVOLD***

Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library,
UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was
made.

CHILD MAIDELVOLD
AND OTHER BALLADS

BY
GEORGE BORROW

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION
1913

_Copyright in the United States of America_
_by Houghton_, _Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter_.

CHILD MAIDELVOLD.

The fair Sidselil, of all maidens the flower,
With her mother the Queen sat at work in her bower.

So hard at the woof the fair Sidselil plies,
That out from her bosom, so white, the milk flies.

"Now hear thou, O Sidselil, child of my heart,
What causes the milk from thy bosom to start?"

"O that is not milk, my dear mother, I vow,
It is but the mead I was drinking just now."

"Unlike are the two, most unlike to the sight,
The one it is brown, and the other is white."

"I see it is best that the truth be declared,
The handsome Child Maidelvold me has ensnared."

"And if it be truth what thou now hast declared,
And handsome Child Maidelvold thee has ensnared,

"Aloft on the gallows I'll hang him, I trow,
And burn thee to ashes the gallows below."

Proud Sidselil she her blue mantle puts on,
And unto Child Maidelvold's bower she is gone.

With her fingers so tapering she twirled at the pin:
"Child Maidelvold rise, and with speed let me in."

"I've summoned no one the tribunal before,
And at night to no one will I open my door."

"Child Maidelvold rise, I beseech, in C